The Widow, The Priest and The Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island

by Amy Chavez

Overview

Get to know the inhabitants of a tiny Japanese island—and their unusual stories and secrets—through this fascinating, intimate collection of portraits.

When American journalist Amy Chavez moved to the tiny island of Shiraishi (population 430), she rented a house from an elderly woman named Eiko, who left many of her most cherished possessions in the house—including a portrait of Emperor Hirohito and a family altar bearing the spirit tablet of her late husband.

Why did she abandon these things? And why did her tombstone later bear the name of a daughter no one knew? These are just some of the mysteries Amy pursues as she explores the lives of Shiraishi's aging residents.

The 35 revealing accounts in this book include:

• The story of 40-year-old fisherman Hiro, one of two octopus hunters left on the island, whose brother died tragically in a boating accident
• A friendly Buddhist priest, now in his eighties, who reflects on his childhood during the war years, witnessing fighter pilots readying themselves to die, and the ever-present, gnawing hunger he felt
• A "pufferfish widow," so named because her husband died after accidentally eating a poisonous pufferfish. Now 95, she once battled a widely-held belief that because her son was born in an inauspicious year, he should not be allowed to live
• A tombstone mason's wife, 85, recalls what it was like to arrive on Shiraishi for the first time to marry a man she had never met before

Interspersed with Amy's reflections on her own life on the island, these stories paint an evocative picture of Japanese society across nearly a century. Fascinating insights into local superstitions and folklore, memories of the war and the bombing of nearby Hiroshima, and of Shiraishi's heyday as a resort in the 1960s and 70s are interspersed with accounts of common modern-day problems like the collapse of the local economy and a rapidly-aging community which has fewer residents each year.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9784805316917
Publisher:	Tuttle Publishing
Publication date:	05/24/2022
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Amy Chavez arrived in Japan from America in 1993, fresh out of graduate school. After a few years enjoying the city life, she began a search for the "real Japan" and found it on Shiraishi (population 430), a tiny island in the Seto Inland Sea. For ten years she lectured at a Japanese university before becoming a full-time writer. For over 20 years she has penned a column for The Japan Times covering issues central to island life such as tourism, the environment, aging and depopulation. She and her Australian husband have been renovating their Japanese home on Shiraishi for the past 17 years, the amount of time it takes some species of cicada to reach maturity. Chavez is the author of several books, including Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan: Do it Right and Be Polite. She has a B.A. in creative writing from Miami University, Oxford, and an M.A. in technical writing.

Read an Excerpt

THE BUSH WARBLERS are announcing spring as I cross a small stone bridge into an old Japanese garden for my first interview. A stone lantern peeks out from behind a pine tree with a wrinkled bark. The branch of a babe tree is being pulled hither by an anchored rope to encourage growth in this direction. I press the doorbell and moments later hear a door slide open at the far side of the garden. A woman with golden white hair, grasping a prettily painted cane peers out. She tells me to wait while she comes around to the front door.

Once I'm invited inside, the Stone Bridge Lady opens the shoji paper-screened doors onto a cavernous twelve-tatami-mat room off the entrance. "I used to entertain people in this room but with my bad knee now, I canÆt sit on the floor anymore."

I peer into the elegant space: a large calligraphic scroll hangs in the alcove; fresh, white shoji doors suggest another room beyond, and oh, what's that hulking in the corner? A life-size statue with a menacing face, wearing armor: it's a samurai! A horned helmet sits atop the head, a sword hangs to his side, ready to butt and lance the first intruder. Leaning down from above is a framed photo of a dapper-looking man who must be her deceased husband.

"The house is seventy years old," she explains. "We built it after we married." Her voice echoes down the polished wooden-floored corridor as she leads me to the back of the fourteen-room house and ushers me into a room with a Western-style sofa. "I was born in Taisho 14 [1925], you know. I'm ninety-five. Not many of my classmates are still around. I'm one of four children, all girls. I'm the youngest and the only one left.

"In the Meiji period [1868-1912], my father was a fisherman. But then all the men had to go to war so they couldn't continue fishing. My father had to go too. Those of us born in the Taisho era [1912- 1926], we had a tough time. There were always wars going on. When I was in elementary school, we had the Chinese Incident— our war with China— then when I was in high school there was the Pacific War. Our top military man at that time was Tojo Hideki.

"It was just after the war, during the US Occupation, when I married Ryosaku. His father and mine were cousins. At that time, when women married, they always went to the bridegroom's house and lived there. The oldest son would live in the same house as his parents and the younger brothers would set up a new household somewhere else— this system is called honke-bunke. The word honke refers to the parents' house, the family heritage home. Since I married the first son, I moved here into the honke house. I also took care of his parents as they aged.

"But eventually we tore down the old place and built this one, so the garden is much older than the house. I grew up in a different neighborhood, in Okujo. My family home is vacant now because my sisters went to live with their husbands when they married. I pay someone to cut the weeds around that house, but no one lives there.

"My husband went to Iwakuni with the Marine Corps for some years. It wasn't until he came back that I married him. I was twenty-three years old and he was one year older than me. At that time, no one owned much of anything. My mother bought me a kimono to get married in. I don't know how she found it or how she paid for it but I remember it was black with a pattern of Japanese maple leaves. The sleeve length was somewhere in between the long ones that an unmarried woman wears and the shorter sleeves of a married woman. This kimono with mid-length sleeves is called chuburi. After that, my younger relatives all borrowed mine. Seems like everyone got married in that kimono! But people don't wear chuburi anymore. I have it somewhere in a drawer.

"We spent two or three days getting ready for the wedding. In those days all functions were carried out at home, so my wedding was here. In those days getting married to someone who lived on the island was normal. We often married our cousins, so we all have the same name: Harada, Amano, Nishihara, Nakatsuka, Yamakawa. Lots of them!

"Anyway, after we married, I couldn't get pregnant. My husband really, really wanted a child so he talked to his brother about adopting one of his sons. But by then the brother had moved to the mainland and his wife didn't care for Shiraishi Island, so in the end, she wouldn't let the child come here and live with us. Well, we're an island so the life is different here.

"So then we thought we could adopt one of my older sister's sons, but that didn't work out either. You know that samurai statue in the front room? That's the traditional ornament to display in the house on the annual Boy's Day celebration in May. We bought that because we thought we would be adopting my nephew." — Chavez, Amy. "The Stone Bridge Lady." The Widow, The Priest, and The Octopus Hunter. Tuttle Publishing, 2022, pg.27-9

Editorial Reviews

"When it comes to writers on Japan, Amy Chavez is as good as it gets. Her works convey such energy, enthusiasm and richness of detail that everything she writes is a joy to read." —Robert Whiting, author of You Gotta Have Wa

"The chat will surely be a treat for fans of Amy's work. For those stumbling across her work for the first time, I am certain you'll enjoy all that is discussed and covered in this compelling talk." — The Life As A…Podcast

"Once in a great while, you come across a book so compelling, interesting, and important that you want to share it with everyone. Such is the case with the latest book from author Amy Chavez, entitled The Widow, The Priest and The Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island…" — Dr. Jessie Voigts, Wandering Educators

"What began with her curiosity about the previous inhabitant of her house, ultimately led Chavez to interview many of her neighbors. The result is a fascinating narrative that includes photographs, anecdotes, and memories from the people living there." — Mary Hillis, Asian Review of Books

"With The Widow, the Priest and the Octopus Hunter, Amy Chavez has presented us with a gift of cultural preservation…she has revealed to us a culture that has disappeared in most places in Japan and may soon disappear on Shiraishi Island as well. […] Her love and appreciation of her surroundings is so deep, she captures the sights, smells and sounds so vividly, that she has made me nostalgic for a world I have never experienced." —Tina deBellegarde, author of the Batavia-on-Hudson series

"The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter is a touching, even heartrending, chronicle of an old community near collapse. Nothing remotely like this has been written in English or Japanese about Japan's regional decline. Amy has gifted us a precious record of Japan's fading rural soul." —Alex Kerr, author of Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Modern Japan

Frank, idiosyncratic and lucid, it is easy to read as only a book written by a person well used to writing can be. Gathering the threads of history from 1912 to 2021, carefully holding together the details of island life—ceremonial, economic and everyday—before they are swept away by the harsh realities of modernity, has been Amy's pleasure and mission […] Amy herself, with this book, has shown herself an integral part of this preservation. —Rebecca Otowa, author of At Home in Japan

From the Publisher